Neuruppin, 31. August 2018

600 students, doctoral candidates and post-docs from 84 nations met 43 Nobel Prize winners at this year’s Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates from 24 to 29 June 2018. One of them: Patrick Timm, enrolled in the medical model curriculum at the Brandenburg Medical School since April 2015. Timm still cannot quite believe that he was invited to this magnificent event. Fascinated from childhood by stories about Albert Schweitzer and his Lambaréné hospital, Robert Koch’s discovery of tuberculosis or Alexander Fleming’s discovery of antibiotics, after school he decided to take up medical studies as a way to help people in illness, and also to satisfy his need for a better understanding of the world in general and the human body in particular. He still feels passionate about science and research.
Right from the first day of the meeting, the MHB student had numerous encounters with prominent personalities, such as the Federal Minister of Research and Education Anja Karliczek, Harald zu Hausen (born 1936 in Gelsenkirchen, laureate of physiology/medicine), and Louis Ignarro, American pharmacologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1998. “Every day I met exciting scientists from many different countries and the best universities worldwide. It was a particular pleasure to talk to the two laureates of 2017, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young, who received the award in medicine and physiology for decoding the internal biological clock. It was an inspiring experience to talk to scientists whose findings and discoveries form part of medical textbooks and who nevertheless appear quite friendly, helpful and down-to-earth. The organizers had promised this would be one of the best weeks of my life, and they were absolutely right. I shall always cherish the memory of those conversations and encounters. A dream has come true.”

The Nobel laureates – this year a majority from the fields of medicine, physiology and chemistry – primarily addressed research issues related to the internal biological clock, personalized medicine and genetic engineering. Other topics were fake news, scientific communication and the practices involved.
MHB Dean Prof. Dr. Edmund Neugebauer welcomes the invitation of Patrick Timm to this exclusive event as distinction and acknowledgement not only of the MHB student in person but also of the MHB as a still young university. The role of science in the so called post-factual age, so Neugebauer, was an appropriate topic of debate at the laureate meeting, in view of the fact that the Brandenburg Medical School has joined the ‘Pulse of Europe’ campaign and propagates evidence-based medicine.
The Lindau Meeting of Nobel Laureates is an international forum of exchange for young researchers and leading scientists. It offers classical events such as lectures, panel discussions, poster sessions and Master classes, and starting from this year also new formats like Agora Talks, Science Walks, Life Lectures (in the spirit of open exchange) and Laureate Lunches. Established in 1951, the laureate meetings foster exchange, inspiration and networking. Patrick Timm is the first MHB student to attend the renowned event.